Manna to open Tulsa hub, create 1,000 U.S. jobs

On Wednesday, Manna will make Tulsa its first full-scale metropolitan U.S. operation and central American base, a move that will create more than 1,000 jobs in the city over the next three years. The hires will span aviation and flight operations, commercial operations, customer support, manufacturing, maintenance and other business functions.

The company plans to begin flying orders in Tulsa within two months, with service tied to partners including DoorDash, McDonald’s and Uber Eats. By mid-2027, Manna expects to operate from 40 bases across the city, and executive chairman Kenny Jacobs called the U.S. Southwest the “battleground” for scaling autonomous drone delivery. Manna expects about 90 percent of Tulsans to be able to order by drone within the next year.

The launch is built around a site at 15th and Utica, where test flights were already underway. Manna is also building a factory to produce its own proprietary delivery drone, and the company demonstrated a drone with an 8-pound payload capacity for deliveries directly to homes and businesses. Tulsa’s federal Tech Hub designation and its drone test site at Skyway Range on 36th Street North give the company a local regulatory and testing backdrop.

Ireland will remain Manna’s global headquarters and research-and-engineering center. The company, founded in Ireland in 2018, has completed almost 380,000 global deliveries. Manna paused services in Ireland because of the absence of clear national planning regulations, a hurdle it does not expect to face in the U.S.

The Tulsa push follows a $50 million Series B round in April that brought Manna’s total funding to $110 million, with investors including ARK Invest, the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, Schooner Capital, Coca-Cola HBC, Molten Ventures, Enterprise Ireland and Tapestry. Manna has previously operated in Ireland, Finland and Texas and has worked with Uber, Deliveroo, Just Eat and DoorDash.